Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Rampage marathon

I logged in with the intention of catching up on my ToAU missions and proceeded to complete the Mission 7 cutscenes, but was soon dissappointed that I couldn't launch Mission 8 until the next day (midnight JP time). So I put up my flag and gathered my fishing materials together for some carp collection in Al Zahbi, hoping for a Besieged event as a nice diversion.

Of course, I received another Caedarva Mire invitation before I had a chance to cast a line.

The zone wasn't as overcrowded as the night before and we were fortunate to secure the camp at J-8 on the ridge, so we never ran out of mobs. Amazingly, this party went for hours without a refresher. The WHM had subbed SMN, had plenty of hMP gear, and somehow never seemed to run extremely low on MP. Fortunately the leader was BLM, so this added to the MP pool a bit. Nevertheless, I made a point of sending a compliment to the WHM, since she was clearly doing an amazing job. The rest of the party consisted of NIN, THF, WAR, DRK, all in the 72-73 range.

The party was quite lucrative in EXP and absolutely uneventful. There were a few close calls due to last-minute pops, but we pulled through. A BRD was eventually rotated in to replace the leader and a RNG replaced the DRK, and the pulls went into overdrive. By the time I left, I'd been in the party for about 4 hours and it was still going strong.

I'm currently 8400 EXP into level 73 and can finally off-hand the Maneater. My DoT seems to have increased remarkably: the latent effect on the Maneater is an increase from 43 to 49 DMG, supplemented by "hidden" effects of Accuracy +5 and Attack +18. Unfortunately, Amnesia doesn't do wonders for the trigger, since I can remain stuck at 100+%TP for awhile until it wears off, actually leaving me at a disadvantage compared to the Reserve Captain's Pick, which was at least giving me +10 Atk. But I can see the Maneater/Woody combo being very powerful in merit parties that don't involve these blasted Imps.

Tonight will probably consist of reading through more ToAU cutscenes, which are quite enjoyable, although Naja seems to have a bit of a dominatrix complex.